Quickies

I certainly would rather be writing in here than transferring online BioChem powerpoints to bullet-pointed Word files but school calls.

I did, however, want to share two quick things: a source and an article from that source. Since the article is, once again, outside my usual transportation scope, I wanted to provide an explanation. First, the site:

INHABITAT

The site is a feed and can be added to your reader program (if you have no idea what I'm talking about but would like to, comment and I'll help you out).

In their words:

Inhabitat.com is a weblog devoted to the future of design, tracking the innovations in technology, practices and materials that are pushing architecture and home design towards a smarter and more sustainable future.

Design to save us all. Making sustainability part of "the cool" is, simply, the only way to get it to catch. Make the coolest thing the most sustainable (or vice versa) and it happens, just like that.

I've always found minimalist construction and design the most beautiful. Aesthetics to me have more to do with working with what you have rather than brute force. For example: a domicile constructed into a hillside is far more beautiful than one that was built on the flat grave site of the same hill.

In the same vein, remodeling old structures and outfitting the inside with modern design elements appeals to me A LOT. There is a building here in San Diego that gutted an old, unused church to make huge loft condos.

So, it makes sense that this structure is, in my eyes, undeniably gorgeous:





Read the article for more information but contemplate this little nugget of happiness...

The embodied energy in existing materials has been diluted through an extension of the structure’s viability. Through reuse and adaptation the cost of demolition, trucking and land filling debris, the manufacturing, transport and installation of new structural materials has been eliminated. The result is a quiet lesson in “stealth green” - reuse brings both ecological and cultural advantages.

By not wrecking this building to create another, the whole renovation paid for itself. Let that sink it...

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